A recollection of Rigoberto Menchu

[Brad De Long]

>In December 1998, the memoir I, Rigoberto Menchu was exposed as a
>heavily propagandistic fake, her dead brother Nicholas turning up alive
>and well, and her tales of involvement in the Guatemalan Peasant
>movement incommensurate with her age.
>
>--
>Jim heartfield

"Fake" as in "false in the details" or "false in the experience"? To say of
_I, Rigoberto Menchu_ that it's a fake because it claims that one of her
brothers was burned when he was actually shot seems to me to profoundly
miss the point of what the Guatemalan Army was doing in the early 1980s.

Is _Homage to Catalonia_ fake because Eric Blair amplifies and sharpens the
change of mind he underwent in Spain? I would say not. I would say that
everything that I have heard has moved _I, Rigoberto Menchu_ to the status
of Pericles's funeral oration, or _Homage to Catalonia_, or _Darkness at
Noon_.

Brad DeLong